About
Alamandria is a social initiative through which meditation, artistic process and aesthetic experiences are used as a means to relieve the stresses and challenges of daily life and to awaken personal insight.
We offer experiential courses and retreats that provide a unique approach to self-mastery, mindfulness and meditation. Original creative processes have been designed to facilitate personal discovery and cultivate depth of perception whilst providing a perfect balance of meditative & mindfulness practice, stillness, movement, play, creativity and the opportunity for solitude.
Not everyone is an experienced artist yet artistic experiences are available to everyone. These experiences contain forces that can raise us from mundane existence to an awakening of beauty, gratitude and self-awareness.
MARK GEARD
MAAT. Clinical (First Class Honours). MDes. (Distinction)
Mark is an experienced meditant and artist of many years. He runs workshops and retreats and takes a keen interest in research concerning artistic processes and their usefulness to meditative practice. Mark was a design academic for 11 years at Massey University before pursuing a career in arts therapy. As part of his therapeutic and meditation practice Mark has worked with prison inmates and clients who have experienced mental illness and sexual abuse. He believes that meditation serves to strengthen the spiritual core of our being providing equilibrium and inner calmness in a world that is increasingly chaotic. He has been a practitioner of Tai Chi, Qi Gong and kyudo.
EMILY ROSE FLETCHER
BDes (Honours)
Emily is an experienced meditant, facilitator and Creative Life Coach and uses her contemplative practice as a source for her creative artistic endeavours. Her last exhibition was a series of contemporary devotional paintings entitled Roses of the Soul and she is also now working on two future exhibitions: The Sacred Grove – a series of ‘tree of life’ paintings created as meditations and imaginations around the themes of courage, protection, boundaries, letting go, karma, transformation and awakening. The second entitled Empyrean explores the spiritual warrior that resides in each of us as represented through breastplates, diadems and finials and forms the basis of a workshop exploring self-leadership and personal empowerment. Emily has been a Youthline Counsellor, youth mentor and a long term volunteer at the Mary Potter Hospice where she facilitated Creative Mindfulness Sessions for their staff. Emily is a successful graphic designer and founder of Emily Fletcher Design. She is a storyteller and poet with a strong belief in the inspiriting power of story, myth and ritual.
See Emily’s work on Instagram.